Rush
by Shadsie
Summary: SPOILERS. Sometimes the ambulance runs into problems getting the patient to the destination. Join a young Impa and a young adult Purah as they rush to save Link's life and find absolutely everything going wrong on the way. A simple rescue mission should be no problem for a pair of trained Sheikah warriors, right? Not with the hope of the world dying and time running out.


**RUSH  
A Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild fan fiction**

* * *

"How is he?"

"The same as he's been; dying."

Impa looked back at Purah, who carried a limp young man in her arms. The two women jumped and dashed over the fields and rocks. There were few things on land speedier than a well-trained Sheikah warrior, but if anything could go wrong in this mission, it was happening.

Purah's ears perked to the sound of bokoblin-grunts. They were being pursued again. At least the rain had let up for a moment, but the ground remained slick with mud. They could ill-afford a trip or a slip, not when the life of the world's hope was hanging in the balance.

"On it," Impa said calmly as she fell back to deal with their pursuers. As it was, Purah volunteered to be the carrier while Impa was the escort. Impa was just a little bit more of a warrior to Purah's scholar, although they were both physically gifted. The dead weight in Purah's arms issued a gentle moan as she landed hard from a vaulting jump.

"There's still a little life in you yet, Linky," Purah whispered, clutching Link close. "Hold on."

It was the first time he'd made any sound or movement, even subtle, since Purah and Impa had found him fallen. There had been a flash of golden light and the Guardians that were overrunning Blatchery Plain had suddenly stilled and went silent. The sisters had rushed to the assistance of Princess Zelda and Link only to find the princess covered in grime and holding her knight in her arms. Unbuckling the Master Sword from him, she ordered them to take him to the Shrine of Resurrection, a secret Sheikah lost technology project that was being worked on in the shelter of a cave up on the plateau near to the Temple of Time. The princess had finally unlocked her power, but it was too late for the other key in defeating Ganon. Death was calling for Link and the only hope for him – and for Hyrule - was something that was in an experimental stage. The Shrine of Resurrection might not even work. As it was, Link could die on the way there.

It seemed like everything was trying to make it happen. Impa dispatched the bokoblins and came running back up alongside Purah, sheathing her sword while running. A few Guardian sentinels skittered here and there along the landscape, their blue and fuchsia light glowing in the growing dark as the sun began to set.

"I can see the plateau just up ahead," Impa said. "Can you scale it with him?"

"You bet I can!"

"We've been in a dead run for hours. Can you do it without rest?"

"There's no time to rest. His wounds aren't stable."

Link was covered in grime, which had rubbed off all over the front of Purah's clothing. She could not tell whether most of it was mud or blood. The young man was covered in laser-burns and as best as Purah could guess, most of the damage he'd taken was likely internal and not readily visible. She knew that they could not rest, however. Even an hour's camp would be risking precious time. Thankfully, both she and Impa had famous levels of stamina.

Link had fought well. By the time the sisters had made it to the plain, they'd seen the remains of several Guardians and monsters that had been given a taste of the Master Sword. Arrows had littered the grounds, too, which was rife with the smells of gunpowder and electricity. The princess's chief knight had lived up to being the Master Sword's Chosen, but as she had scolded him in the past, he was not immortal and the pair had been swarmed by the machines. When the Sheikah had arrived, calling out "Princess!" they'd deemed Lady Zelda's survival a miracle. Link had done his job as well as it could have been done, given the circumstances.

All of Hyrule had been preparing for the return of Ganon, but they'd expected the attack to come from outside the kingdom. They had expected the Guardians to be their grand army. They had expected the Divine Beasts to lay the threat down. No one had expected the entry point of Ganon's attack, or the sheer level of his power. They were not dealing with a mere sorcerer, or quite the same force that was dealt with in legends past. The land had been beset by no less than a god, no less than a cosmic force perhaps greater than gods.

And all of their marvelous revived ancient technology had been turned against them by a thing that wanted nothing than to eat the world and perhaps all existence entire.

Bones erupted from the ground before the trio.

"Damn!" Impa cursed, bringing out her weapon. The stalmoblins barred their path, forcing Purah to stand back. She dare not put Link down on the ground to fight herself. As soon as an opening was made, she had to run with him. One of the undead beasts kicked Impa to the ground. She rolled and hacked its shin until it fell, its skull popping off its body and bouncing in the mud. She made quick work of crushing it with a punishing sword-strike. Purah found herself running and ducking as an enormous dragonbone club came sailing for her head. It swept over her, knocking one of her polished hair-sticks out.

Impa had no time to dispatch all of three of the revenants. She'd taken care of the one, but the remaining two failed to chase them once they'd reached the foothills of the plateau. She caught up to her sister jumping along the crags.

"That was close!" Purah yelped. "Are you alright, little sis?"

"Yeah," Impa grunted. "Too close. How's Link?"

"Still dying."

"Stable?"

"Fading. His pulse isn't right."

"We must make haste, then."

"I think it must be folly in Hylia to appoint a single mortal to stand against her enemy."

"Two people. Remember the princess."

"Two, then," Purah said over the wind. "The world is dying and so is he. The situation could not be worse."

"Of course it could be," Impa commented. "Neither he or the princess is dead yet, nor are we – and there is still the sword."

"Princess Zelda isn't thinking of trying to take it up alone, is she?"

"She shall secure the Master Sword in a safe location," Impa explained. "I am afraid, however, after that, she does intend upon containing the Calamity herself until we can get Link operational."

"Like I was trying to say, for that sword to have only a single wielder… it seems like the most brutal of divine flaws."

It began to rain as the Sheikah women scrambled over the rocks toward the lip of the plateau. It grew harder. The wind was punishing and the stones became slick.

"Are you alright?" Impa asked; looking behind as Purah tried to keep up. At that moment, Purah's foot slipped on a wet boulder. Both she and Link went tumbling down the edge of the ridge. Purah grunted, and curled to protect herself. Link flopped like a rag doll.

"Sister!" Impa cried as she leapt down. Purah picked herself up; they both ran to a crag where Link's body came to a rest. Purah pawed him in cursory examination. A bloom of deep red shown on his tunic, one of his wounds having been opened up in earnest by the fall.

"Pulse – check," Purah said, "Breathing, check. I think he's got a couple of more things broken than already were, though."

Link let out an involuntary moan and a whimper. "Easy," Impa said, stroking his rain-slicked hair. She helped Purah get him into her arms again.

"He's thoroughly unconscious," Purah assessed, "but I have to wonder if he feels it. It's hard to tell at this point if the reactions are mere autonomic responses."

"The princess tasked us with saving his life, not making him worse," Impa grunted. "Nature is not making it easy."

"I'll watch my step," Purah assured, not so sure, herself.

The pair crested the plateau with their cargo. At Impa's signal, Purah followed her in hunching down in the grass. People had already fled this area of Hyrule, but Guardians were scuttling around the Temple of Time – or, at least, the Temple of Time's grounds.

"What they've done to it…" Impa moaned.

The clockwork creatures were blasting anything that moved, even the shadows caused by the clouds with the moon shining through. The once grand temple – dedicated to Hylia and the element of Time was practically rubble. A few "dead" Guardians were stationary around the grounds, their limbs severed. The people here had put up a good fight. Impa thought she could see a few bodies on the ground. She narrowed her eyes.

"We're going to have to be extra stealthy in order to get to the cavern," she said. "Follow my lead."

"We've got another problem," Purah said from the vantage point they'd found among a grove of trees.

"What's that?"

"Link just stopped breathing."

"Hylia damn it."

Purah laid Link out on the grass. "He's still got a weakening pulse."

Impa leaned over, held Link's nose and quickly puffed a few breaths into him to try to stimulate his lungs. Purah monitored his condition.

"Stay alive, you hear us?" Purah scolded. "Come on, Link! Zelda's counting on you. You aren't allowed to leave yet! If you die now, you won't be even the shadow of a Hero! Do you hear me, you jerk?"

A choke and a twitch elicited relieved sighs from both women.

(One-hundred years later, an aged and heavily-wrinkled Impa wondered if she should tell Link about the time that they'd "shared a kiss").

They were off again to the shrine. The cave was within sight as they carefully crossed a field, ducking behind boulders and what remained of the walls of dwellings.

"Robbie's still in there, isn't he?" Purah asked.

"He should be. It was his last research-station," Impa said with a quick nod. "In fact, I think he was supposed to be standing by in case we had a chance to get one of the Champions to him." She winced at that. They – as well as Link and Zelda had been too late to save any of the Vah-pilots.

As the question was being answered, the distinct sound of a Guardian's homing-sight caught their attention.

"Run!" Impa commanded.

Red filled Purah's vision as she succumbed to the temptation to turn her head slightly. She had a target on her back and a fully-lit Guardian loomed over her. The automaton's swift scuttling over the grass was the most disturbing sound she'd ever heard – like a giant cockroach. It made an ominous, deep, tinny _machine_ sound as it leveled the gunnery-sight, as well.

"Run!" Impa shouted again. "I'll distract it! Just go!"

Purah did as told, running and ducking. For a moment she looked back to see Impa leap onto the body of the metal beast. A war-cry pierced the air. Purah jumped and got behind a freshly-broken stone wall as a laser detonated the ground near her feet, clutching Link close. His head lolled. Why was it this moment of all the time they'd spent running up to this mesa that she noticed how tiny he was? Zora, Gerudo and Rito were tall folk as adults. Gorons were all around big. Sheikah and Hylians were comparatively short, but Link was just _small_ even for a Hylian. It was difficult to believe from appearances alone that someone so short and lean had wiped out entire _armies_ of monsters that had plagued villages and menaced Zelda. In the state he was now in, Purah felt like she was cradling a child.

She blinked as she entered the Shrine of Resurrection, blinded by the artificial light of the monitors and wall-runes. Robbie jerked up from his seat at a control console.

"H-help!" the young woman choked out.

"What is this?" Robbie asked, pushing his eyewear up on his head. He was a young man, but already had been creating inventions to try to improve his sight. Robbie was particularly interested in magnification technology as one of his specialties – both of the lost variety and ideas that he was working on himself. He'd said that the Sheikah were never going to fully understand the technology of their ancestors if they were unable to read the finest of lines that had been etched into some of the slates and tiles that they'd found. Of course, he also liked to play with forges in trying to re-create ancient weaponry and armors and he knew a fair bit, at this point, about lost-technological applications to biology and medicine.

"Link?" He questioned. "Oh, dear. Let's get him onto the Bed."

Impa's shadow appeared in the doorway as Purah and Robbie were laying their patient out. "We need to strip him down," Robbie said, seemingly ignoring her.

"Little sister!" Purah exclaimed, "Are you hurt?"

"Just some small burns. Is Link in one piece?"

"That is relative," Robbie said, summoning a bright light and wiping down Link's body with a wet cloth. He reached for various instruments that the Hylian would not have recognized had he been awake and lucid. "Can you tell me what happened?"

"Guardians. Blatchery Plain," Impa huffed out. "He and the princess…"

Robbie put his eye-piece back on as he began some fine stitching to close one of the open wounds on his fresh patient. "Is she?"

"She's alive," Purah said, also doing what work she could to prepare Link for the suspension process. She was practiced in what to do. Although this "resurrection bed" that could supposedly bring back a person from the brink of death was experimental, she, Robbie, her sister and other Sheikah associates had done some tests – the first one being upon a Kakariko villager's sick dog. Other tests were less fortunate – tests upon cuccoos and other livestock that they had purposely crippled for the process when the initial dog-saving experiment had worked. Purah still felt bad about it, but she had taught herself to think in terms of "subjects of the science for the greater good of gaining knowledge" and they had tried to bring the animals close to death in the most painless ways possible – similar to how Zelda dealt with dispatching insects and amphibians used in alchemic elixir-making. It helped that the latter animals were slated for slaughter and eating, anyway, though in the case of the cuccoos, the research team had to be very careful to mute them to keep them from calling their comrades in for a defensive strike. Some had lived, some had perished.

The Bed had also been tested on one elderly man who had been rejuvenated after a weeks' stay in its suspension-system. It had knit his broken hip and, as far as Purah and Robbie's scans had assessed, had mildly de-aged him. He had left the Bed still an old man, but it had, perhaps, added a year or two to his life, his knit bones aside. Purah had taken note of this aspect to the medical technology in particular: The ability to halt the aging process was no small feat, even if it came in small amounts.

"I had expected you to bring Princess Zelda in here," Robbie commented as he readied equipment. "With her as insistent as she was about facing the Calamity herself, even with him at her side. I wasn't expecting Link to fall."

"None of us were," Impa commented. "Can we save him?"

"I don't even know how he's alive now," Robbie confessed. "But, yes, I believe he has a chance."

He returned to a console where a command-slate – what Purah called a Sheikah Slate, was kept. "Suspension-waters, fill," he commanded to it.

Clean water flooded the bed where Link lay, covering his body so that only his face remained above it. Robbie had replaced his underclothing after having mended a stab-wound on the young man's thigh, insisting that he'd probably want at least a little dignity upon waking up.

"These waters," he said, licking his dry lips, "They'll handle all processes for him. They'll regenerate him, nourish him, handle toxins…"

"How long must he stay like this?" Impa asked, putting her hands on her hips.

Robbie ignored her and barked another order into the Bed's control-station. "Memory Lock Engage."

"What?" Purah yelped. "What are you doing to him? Memory Lock? What does that mean?"

Robbie held the slate up in one hand with a noncommittal hum. "It means a memory-lock," he said. "The slumber is going to leave him a partial amnesiac. His memories will be locked away in his subconscious."

"Why in the world would you do that?" Purah demanded. "How can Linky wake up and save the world if he doesn't remember anything about who he is?"

"Oh, he'll remember his combat skills and the like," Robbie explained. "He'll not be reduced to the level of an infant. It's just that… I am afraid that given his wounds, he is going to have to sleep for a long time. If he wakes up flooded with memories of recent events all at once just after that, he is likely to go insane or to suffer a fatal heart-attack. It is a mercy. It is not like they will be gone forever. They should come back to him in bits and pieces – spurred by familiar scenery, perhaps – at the right time."

"How long?" Impa repeated. "The world is falling apart."

"Months," Robbie muttered, putting a knuckle to his chin. "At this rate, probably years, maybe even decades…perhaps even a century."

"A century?" Purah complained. "You have got to be kidding!"

"Considering his condition," Robbie began, swiping his fingers over his slate and placing it over the bed with the body and the red-stained waters to capture a picture to use as a wound-map, "It is nothing short of Hylia's grace that he is even barely alive right now. There is damage to his heart. The waters need to spur him to re-grow a kidney and part of his liver as they are heavily damaged, not to mention the bone-fractures. His level of injury is not one that people come back from. It may just take as long as a hundred years for this boy to gain survivability and even a fraction of his strength. Optimally, he'll awaken with the average strength of a man his age."

"But… a century!" Purah continued to complain. "Like my sister said, the world is falling apart!"

"Lady Zelda shall deal with Ganon in the meantime," Impa said. "I have the utmost faith in her. She awakened the Sacred Power today." She took a glance at Link. "She did it for him."

"And so he shall return… one day," Purah sighed. "Will we be there?"

"Thank Hylia for the long Sheikah lifespan," Impa muttered, "And we have nothing on his friends among the Zora. I, for one, will make it my mission to be around – when he is ready." She took his bloodied blue tunic into her hands. "I will mend this," she said, "And I will keep it for him when the time is right for him to wear it once more."

"I suppose we should find a way to leave him some basic clothes," Purah suggested.

"And a guide," Impa said, taking the Sheikah Slate from Robbie's fingers. "And to seal this place away from those who'd do him harm."

"We will check back from time to time, unless he finds us first," Robbie agreed with a sad smile. "It is time now to keep him safe and to let him rest."

"Goodbye, Linky," Purah said. "You'd better appreciate this when you wake up. Getting you here was quite the rush."

* * *

 **END.**

 **Shadsie, 2017**


End file.
